Modern Muslims

by Steve Howard

  Although I did not feel that Ustadh Mahmoud was particularly impressed by my attempt to point out something in popular culture that I had thought was similar to Republican thinking, looking for such similarities was probably a sociologist’s occupational hazard and helped me develop my vocabulary. Perhaps he found my sharing a novel of colonial India—with someone who was a veteran of Sudan’s anticolonial struggle—ironic. It also reflected my grappling with trying to understand the complex theology I was hearing about every day and its implications for contemporary Sudan society. I was also trying to apply the theology to situations with which I was more familiar. My point in telling this story is to illustrate the remarkable accessibility that Ustadh Mahmoud provided to his followers and my own remarkable naivety in using it to see if the teacher approved of what I had learned. This incident had been something of a trial for me in that I was a bit intimidated by Ustadh Mahmoud’s aura, or how it was portrayed by the brothers around me. I wanted to approach him only with perfect Arabic and with very wise observations. But I was also an apprentice student of Africa, and I found myself in awe of his modern ideas and wanted to get closer to the source. My concerns were probably oversensitive in that Ustadh, a very hospitable teacher, did spend quite a bit of time receiving darawish or simple Sufis from the countryside, who had their own ways of communicating with him. He also would see anyone who had any sort of problem, financial, medical, emotional, marital, and listen with great patience. He knew his followers very well and would often call on a brother or sister with some kind of capacity to help with these inquiries. The other Republican leaders were also very generous in assisting brothers or sisters in need.

  In those days Sudan government offices would close around 2:00 p.m., and brothers would begin the trek home to a siesta and lunch, the biggest meal of the day. While some in the brothers’ house would nap, a team would be busy preparing the afternoon meal. The brothers’ houses and Ustadh Mahmoud were all strictly vegetarian, although meat played a big role in the cuisine of the wider society, and all the brothers came from that culture. But the Republican ideology was that everything was about peace, and the slaughtering of animals for their meat was considered by Ustadh Mahmoud to be an act of violence against the natural world. I remember once sitting in the saloon of Ustadh Mahmoud when a brother slapped a mosquito dead on his arm. “Why did you do that?” Ustadh Mahmoud asked him. When the brother responded that it had bit him, Ustadh said, “You killed it for that?” The meat consumption issue was also connected to the social philosophy of the movement, which emphasized sharing of resources and solidarity with the poor (who could not afford to eat meat).

  The cuisine was strictly vegetarian from the brothers’ kitchens, and they would not let good food go to waste. During the Eid al Dahia celebrations, the major Muslim feast commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismail, it is customary for every family to slaughter a sheep, as Abraham did, often in front of their houses. Our generous next-door neighbors had plenty of delicious marara to share and passed a big plate over the shared wall of our two compounds. Marara is the dish of organ meat from the sheep, a great holiday delicacy. The forbidden meat was consumed with laughter and gusto by the brothers in minutes. I also remember the sense of humor in the community when we would go out for delicious grilled fish in one of the shops next to the Nile. The fish was referred to by the brothers enjoying it as nabaat a-bahar (“a plant of the River”).

  When lunch was ready, we would gather in the main room of the house, where we had begun the day in prayer, and sit on the floor to eat together from two or three large bowls. Lunch might be a stew of eggplant, tomatoes, green pepper, and red onion, served with the Sudanese flat bread made from sorghum, kisra. There might be a salad of jirjir (watercress), and watermelon, bananas, or another fruit for dessert. A subtle message conveyed in this process was the importance of men in Sudan learning how to cook—not generally something boys were exposed to in their mothers’ kitchens. But with many of their prospective wives—the Republican Sisters—already in or getting ready to join Sudan’s labor force, equality in household chores was an important value. Of course, as with everything, there was a gentle, joking competition between the four brothers’ houses as to which one had achieved the higher level in life’s two most basic arenas: food and religion (din, in Arabic). As the brothers in my house described our house situation, it had good din and good food. Comparatively speaking, in their view, the other three houses had: (a) good din and no food; (b) no din and good food; and (c) no din and no food. These ratings were of course not discussed with Ustadh Mahmoud or the senior leadership of the organization; they were used to poke fun at each other and intensify the great solidarity felt by members of each household.

  When lunch was finished and the dishes cleaned and put away, brothers would nap or go off on their errands or get ready for the evening’s activities. On rare occasions, there might be a chance to borrow a friend’s TV and VCR and watch a video with appropriate content such as Ghandi. If it was Thursday or Friday, the Sudan weekend, the brothers from the four houses would have a procession to the home of Ustadh Mahmoud for the weekly dhikir before the sunset prayer. After the prayer on most weeknights, many brothers and sisters would go in teams or individually into town and sell the Republican books person-to-person on the street. The books were small self-published tracts that were written by members of the senior leadership of the brotherhood and described Republican thinking on a variety of issues, including the role of sharia law, the position of women in society, the “problem of Southern Sudan,” and so on. Reports on book sales and public impressions of the Republican approach on the streets would then become an important agenda item for the evening’s meeting with Ustadh Mahmoud.

  When the brothers and sisters returned from hamla (campaign) on the streets, a meeting would be held every evening in the empty lot next to the home of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. No one had a house big enough to hold this group, and the openness of the meeting in an open lot showed the wider society that the Republicans were not hiding or plotting anything, despite the Sudan government’s implications and charges that they were. Beds and chairs were brought out from Ustadh’s house for the sisters to sit on as well as members of the senior leadership. And in the middle were the rows of mats, also used for prayer, where the brothers crowded together. Some, like myself, might seek a space in the back where dozing would be less noticed, or so we thought.

  Trying to remain unnoticed was my challenge, but I think my ability to blend in with the Republican Brotherhood, and not be constantly treated as the “American other,” was a good part of my attraction to the organization. Although there was certainly considerable commentary from the brothers about my different appearance, they focused primarily on their perception of my becoming like them, even in appearance. “inta begait asmar” (your color is turning “asmar”), was an expression I heard a lot from these multihued people as I picked up a tan. I’m not sure that “asmar” is translatable, but let’s say it was their favorite color—and kind of the standard brown that described most people’s complexions. I probably (almost) fit in color-wise because the Sudanese have an astonishing array of color names that they use to describe themselves including green, yellow, red, white, blue, and black! But I will also attribute my fitting in to my discretion. I wanted to be like them, and I kept quiet and studied their behavior so I could do so. I was impressed with how they treated each other, and I wanted to share in that.

  That is not to say there were not tensions. As I have said, I was aware of the terrible human rights abuses occurring all over Sudan, in that era, particularly in the South. But the Republican effort to work on equality and justice as part of their rhetoric as well as their personal agendas impressed me. Nevertheless, it was a surprise when I became aware of ethnic tensions in the house. I was and am a student of Africa and like to have maps of the continent around me. The walls of our house were fairly devoid of decoration so I taped my big map of Africa up
on the wall of the room where I usually slept. It proved to be a fascinating exercise as brothers stopped to study it, looking at Sudan in relationship to the rest of the continent, admiring how the country appeared to be the “heart” if Africa was visualized as a human body (do people in every African country think that their country is Africa’s heart?). In a quiet moment one of the brothers came up to me and told me, “Steve, I really appreciate that you love Africa.” I replied, a bit confused, “Well, here we are in Africa—all of us. I guess we should love it.” He continued, “But I have a special reason why I’m happy that you love Africa, which I’ll share with you sometime.” He was intriguing me, and I asked him about it a couple of days later when we were both away from the house on the University of Khartoum campus. He told me that he was “fellata,” which I knew was the local expression to describe the migrants in Sudan from West Africa, northern Nigeria particularly. For generations Hausa and other West Africans crossed the Sahel through Sudan making their way as pilgrims to Mecca. Families often stopped in Sudan and worked as farm laborers in the Gezira, to raise the money to continue their journeys. Many of them just settled in Sudan where there were today entire villages, particularly in the Sennar area, made up of descendants of West African migrants.

  This brother’s difference was not obvious to me; his Arabic was as perfect as that of any member of the household. As I said above, the Sudanese around me referred to themselves in a dizzying array of colors. But clearly he felt some discrimination, which I grew to understand came from the “Arab Sudanese” strong orientation toward the “Middle East” as their cultural zone, not Africa. This also explained the fascination with my Africa map, and I also looked at Sudan secondary school geography texts where Middle Eastern countries were featured far more prominently than Africa, despite Sudan’s location. As the American historian of Sudan Jay Spaulding explained, Sudan’s fifteenth-century Funj Kingdom adopted Islam and Arabic as the state religion and language almost simultaneously, to raise the prestige of the regime. Ethnically and appearance-wise, the closest regional relatives of the northern Sudanese are the nearby Ethiopians and Eritreans, not the peoples of the Arabian Peninsula. I often think about Dr. Asma Abdelhalim’s comment to me while she was doing her doctorate at Ohio University and spent time in our African Studies Program, where students from twenty to thirty African countries are often represented. “We Sudanese, Steve, come to study Africa here with you, and we understand for the first time that we are African.” The identity issue has raged in Sudan throughout its history, and has fueled all of its political violence. I also remember watching the news on Sudan television over the years and observing with the brothers how the news readers in describing Sudan’s foreign relations with nearby countries would always refer to a link between Sudan and an “Arab” or Muslim country as been al biladain a-shageegain (between the brotherly nations), while those between Sudan and, say, Kenya or Ethiopia, been al biladain a-sadeegain (between the friendly nations). These attitudes contributed to pushing South Sudan out of the Republic, and the bloody turmoil continues. One of the difficult ironies in this situation is the racist discrimination that Sudanese face from their “Arab brothers.” Sudanese who travel to Saudi Arabia and its neighboring Gulf countries to work often experience racism there, with many reporting hearing the epithet, abid, slave, within earshot. Of course, the name Sudan itself was bestowed by the Arabs who referred to the entire African region as bilaad as-sudan, “land of the blacks.”

  While I may have sought a place on a mat at the rear of the evening’s jelsa, I did in fact always feel like I had a front row seat to observe—and occasionally participate in—Islamic social change. The leaders of the organization, men and women selected by Ustadh Mahmoud for their spiritual strength and understanding of the Republican ideology, were supportive of my presence among the brothers. But I did feel a bit shy toward the senior leaders, and perhaps slightly intimated by their serious outlook—at least initially—and drew my own support and knowledge of the movement from the brothers around me in the house. This latter group also became the best source in the wider Republican community for “understanding Steve’s accent,” and they often offered to translate my version of Sudanese Arabic for anyone needing this service. The brothers’ house is where I did learn the language that has allowed me to share this experience and to cross the threshold of other doorways, including the home of Ustadh Mahmoud.

  Lunch at the “brothers’ house” in Atbara, wafd trip of 1982

  “Hajja Rhoda.” Rhoda Abdullahi and her husband, Mohamed El Hassan Mohamed Khair, Rufa’a, 1982

  Ustadh Khalid El Haj, in Wad el Fadl, eastern Gezira, 1989

  Winter farming of ajur, cucumber, Blue Nile near Rufa’a

  Tombs of saints (awlia) in the old cemetery at Abu Haraz, Blue Nile

  Mohamed el Fekki Abdel Rahman, Republican Brother, tailor

  Amna Lotfi, wife of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha

  Somaya Mahmoud, Taha’s daughter, working in Showak, eastern Sudan

  Republican families strolling with author on the banks of the Atbara River, eastern Sudan

  Somaya Mahmoud with her mother, Amna Lotfi

  Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, ca. 1975

  Ustadh Mahmoud officiating at a Republican wedding, ca. 1975

  Brothers and sisters gathered with Ustadh Mahmoud in front of his house, ca. 1980

  Bus ride in Cairo, Talab Zahran with Melaz Mohammed-al-Fatih

  4

  A Women’s Movement

  August generally brings rain to the Khartoum region, replacing the hot, clear sky with thick orange clouds reflecting the baked clay earth below. I remember those orange clouds against the blue sky on the day of Am Fadl’s funeral. He was old and had been ill for some time, wheelchair-bound. Am (“Uncle,” a common honorific for an older man) Mohamed Fadl had been one of Ustadh Mahmoud’s original followers, from the time of the pre-independence Republican Party. He bridged the colonial and independent Sudan eras, working as a teacher and a school inspector in Omdurman, and both of his daughters, Nawal and Rashida, were prominent Republican Sisters as well. News of his death spread quickly through the Republican community, and everyone who was able converged on Ustadh Mahmoud’s house to share condolences. Although many of the brothers had been explaining to me the Republican Brotherhood’s progressive philosophy about women’s place in Islam, the preparations and burial of Am Fadl that followed gave me my first opportunity to witness the Republican women apply what they had learned from Ustadh Mahmoud on the front lines of Islamic transformation. Every aspect of the women’s new lives as Republicans was a rebuke to Muslim convention that kept women from full participation in the life of the Muslim community (ummah). The death of Am Fadl introduced me to the drama that accompanied this transformation.

  As a single, male, young foreigner—whose Arabic was less than nuanced at that point—my access to Sudanese women in general and the Republican Sisters specifically was limited, although, according to some of the brothers, I was developing a specialty of talking to grandmothers. Grandmothers always had time to talk to me, and they taught me new vocabulary. I also had good rapport with the women in the households of my closest friends. All of the other sisters treated me with kindness, good humor, and understanding if not considerable curiosity. When we did have conversations, I found the sisters to be articulate spokespersons for Republican thinking. I also believed that the women viewed me as a potential source of information of what went on exactly in the female-less brothers’ houses, particularly in the arenas of cooking and cleaning. In any case, the events surrounding Am Fadl’s death and burial allowed me to view up close many of the struggles that women faced, unfolding against the backdrop of social tensions in urban Omdurman. Death is a public phenomenon in this culture, and the emotions it reveals trump family privacy.

  Following death, the imperative in Islam is to get the body of the deceased into the ground as quickly as possible, ideally before the sun sets on that day. The hot climate of Sud
an makes this Qur’anic injunction all the more vivid. Am Fadl’s remains were transported from the hospital where he had died to his home on Mourada, the riverside thoroughfare in Omdurman; the name Mourada actually refers to a river port. When the pickup truck from the hospital arrived at the gate to Am Fadl’s family home, there was a group of his women relatives and neighbors there to begin the mourning. In Sudan women are boxed into the customs of “popular Islam,” that is, the nonorthodox practices that characterize the cultural margins of the Muslim community. Women outside of the Republican community were generally not entirely expected to keep up with the obligations of prayer or expected to know much of the Qur’an, for example. Or they participated in “cults,” like zar, which was a practice of magic and charms common across the Horn of Africa and had pre-Islamic origins. At the gate to Am Fadl’s house these non-Republican women wailed theatrically and tried to grab the wrapped corpse from the hands of the brothers who were bringing it into the house for the ritual washing. I had never seen this custom before and found it unsettling, having largely been protected from this Sudanese reality in my new life among the Republicans, or in my old one in the United States, for that matter. But the point of pretending to grab the corpse was that the women “wouldn’t accept death’s reality.” And the women who wailed the loudest or grabbed with the most gusto were supposed to be perceived as the most deeply grieving. Islamic orthodoxy would of course dictate that what followed death—heaven, al-akhira—was an improvement over life on earth. But women were thought to be obsessed with life’s material things and less interested in the disposition of their souls. (I was always amused to hear the tales of restless ba’ati, souls coming back from the dead, who were thought to be women searching for the household items—pots, pans—which they had accumulated while alive. I don’t recall anyone ever relating one of these tales to me, however, with a straight face. My friend and Republican sister, and daughter of the deceased, Nowal Fadl, told me that when she became a Republican she actually gave away her jewelry to try to counter this image of rapacious women.)